How a blind attorney overcame the odds. What are you doing to #BeUnprecedented?

Whenever we find ourselves in a tough situation, the positive advice is to find the silver lining. No need to tell this to attorney Douglas Fowler. He lives out his ‘silver lining’ every day because Douglas has been legally blind since birth.

Throughout his life, Douglas has not let this obstacle get him down, and has never let it define him. Instead, Douglas has “played the cards he was dealt” which has defined him in the eyes of his friends and peers.

Douglas, who received his law degree from Case Western Reserve University, appears to be like any other attorney. However, Douglas overcame the odds for people with a vision-related disability. With the unemployment rate for the visually impaired at 13.4 percent, Douglas is the only legally blind lawyer serving in Stark County, Ohio, area.

As an estate and family planning attorney, Douglas has identified a major problem for millennials specifically, their natural human reluctance to consider their future.

“Part of the problem is that a lot of people have said they need to update their wills, and never do,” he said. “Some, I think, because they don’t like to think about death; many, I believe, because things such as who will take care of their minor children are important but really hard to decide. So they keep putting it off. I can understand how that would be a really tough thing for people.”

“So, my law career at times has been much like what Yogi Berra once said of people coming to the ballpark in Kansas City in the 1960s: ‘If people don’t want to come, nobody’s going to stop them.’ ”